Roger Draper’s underwhelming performance as the Lawn Tennis Association’s
chief executive will come under further scrutiny after Sport England
revealed it was cutting £530,000 of tennis funding.

The move came in response to the latest Active People survey, which shows that the number of people playing tennis once a week has fallen from 530,900 in 2009 to 375,800 in 2011, a drop of almost 30 per cent.

Given that the LTA declares on its website that “our focus is to support participation growth”, this has to be considered a resounding failure.

Draper, who was not available for interview on Tuesday, is often asked why Britain’s elite players – with the exception of Andy Murray – continue to disappoint. He often replies with a blizzard of statistics, purporting to show all the good work the LTA is doing to broaden participation and inspire youngsters.

But Draper’s defence mechanism has been exposed by the Active People results. After six years in the job, on a salary of over £400,000, his position can barely be tenable.

“The decisions announced today follow lengthy discussions with each of the governing bodies,” said Jennie Price, chief executive of Sport England. She added that tennis had failed to reach its growth targets.

The loss of £500,000 will not make a major impact on the LTA’s finances, as Sport England will still supply £24.5million over the next four years, while the Wimbledon fortnight, which is run by the All England Club, feeds another £30 million annually into its coffers.

Yet this embarrassment of riches has seemed to increase only staffing levels at the £40 million National Tennis Centre in Roehampton, while failing to address the systemic problems in the game. The LTA’s last set of accounts revealed that 296 people were on the payroll at a total cost of £11.5 million – an average of almost £40,000 per head.

In a statement, Draper described the Active People figures as “disappointing”. He added that “like other sports we face a huge challenge to increase the numbers playing tennis regularly in challenging economic times, but participation is our top priority”.

Tennis activists hope that the funding cut will help convince the LTA to revise its grass-roots strategy. One of them is Tony Hawks, the actor and comedian who has been running the charity Tennis For Free – with Judy Murray as its patron – since 2005.

Hawks told The Daily Telegraph: “If participation really is your top priority, I would have thought that a model to deliver tennis free to people in local parks, and to prevent courts from disappearing at an alarming rate, ought to be your starting point.

“When the LTA put £150,000 into developing Bishop’s Park in Hammersmith, they didn’t seem to realise that two other sets of courts in the area were closing. I think it’s more important to target people who live in council blocks, to bring new blood into the sport, than to build slightly better facilities for the people who already play.”

Hawks has been working to promote his ideas through Sport England and various MPs, including Meg Munn of Sheffield Heeley. He is hopeful that a partnership with the LTA may soon be achieved, with a view to introducing 90,000 new players to the game over four years.

In the course of a parliamentary debate in January, Munn claimed that “the number of tennis courts has declined in the past 10 years from 33,000 to only 10,000”. She went on to say that “I am sceptical that the LTA can achieve the surge in participation that we are all talking about and all want”.

An LTA spokesman rejected Munn’s figure yesterday, explaining that there were more than 20,000 courts registered on their ‘Allplay’ website. He also said there were 415,000 people signed up as members of British tennis (BTMs).

But Nick Lester, a commentator and coach, said the BTMs were a misleading “exercise in box-ticking”.

“Clubs are signing up these kids who might just play four or five times as part of a summer camp. It’s all part of a numbers game, but I don’t think it’s doing anything to address the real issues,” Lester said.